


Daffodils for St. David's Day

by de_Clare



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexuality, Coming of Age, FTM Harry, Haiti, M/M, Other, Post-Canon, Trans Character, Trans Harry, Transgender, Wizards Without Borders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:13:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3367370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/de_Clare/pseuds/de_Clare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Harry has spent a lifetime thwarting, disrupting and destroying. Perhaps now he craves the slow and deliberate process of building something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daffodils for St. David's Day

**Author's Note:**

> A/N 1: An AU where Remus is still alive and grappling with the vicissitudes of getting older.
> 
> A/N 2: If you squint, you'll notice that Harry isn't cisgender, so don't be alarmed if certain events don't necessarily match expectations. With these two, I think the eroticism is spontaneous and character-driven, rather than based on preconceived anatomical expectations. Perhaps that's how eroticism should be for all of us :)

I received a letter from Harry today, and the timing suggests that this it isn’t a mere social nicety. No one hears from Harry with any frequency, though not so little as to be impolite. No, after the war he had few options: carry on as usual, crack up completely or process in some public and flamboyant manner. Harry chose the latter.

It was one year after the tragedy at Hogwarts. Many people say battle, as if we were walled inside panzer tanks or running cavalry across a midday field. The glorious dead. But I simply see tragedy. A pack of predators infiltrate an institution that’s meant to safeguard the innocent, who are then mobilised for death and combat. Fortunately, the incoming minister saw the danger of militancy, or rather how militancy created these problems in the first place, and commissioned T. Adkisson, a rather sober sculptor with c-shaped frowns in his brow, to design the memorial.

What he did caused quite the scandal. A single crack running from the Hogwarts entrance gate to the rear of the castle in the Great Hall behind high table. That was all. No names. No cowering wide-eyed children and triumphant warriors with impressive profiles. Just an abnormally long crack. Grieving families left the public reception in disgust and a melee broke out when a small group of neo-nationalists in boots and red robes started throwing hexes at the minister’s security detail. The situation was well in hand, but the chaos was unimaginable. After all, the people had been denied their catharsis.  
  
It was at this moment that I heard a hiss behind me. “ _Remus.”_  
  
When I looked behind to see no one, I immediately trained my eyes forward, intuiting that Harry had ducked beneath his invisibility cloak. I lowered my voice to a whisper, “Don’t get involved, Harry.”  
  
“I’m not,” he said with sudden weight, so sudden I felt a bit wrong-footed.  
  
I paused, resisting the urge to glance behind and waited.  
  
“Actually, I’m leaving.”  
  
“Yes, I think you’ve done enough fighting.”  
  
“No, I’m leaving.” He sounded frustrated. “As in away. I don’t know where or how long, but I have to go.”  
  
It was clear that he’d anguished about this silently for some time, and that no direct intervention would persuade him to do otherwise, if I even should be persuading him of that. So I took another tack.  
  
“I’ll expect a letter monthly. I don’t care if you’re in an Arctic sea cave frotting a narwal, you will affix your letter to a penguin and see that it gets to me.” Teacher voice for discipline. Humour to prevent rebellion.  
  
“Right. Thank you…R-remus.”  
  
And I knew with very little preliminaries that he was in love with me. It’s a gift, or perhaps a curse for those of us who live on the margins of society. We rely on kindness and our ability to connect with others, so reading emotions is quite second nature to me. Like when my snout sniffs the air and suddenly there is so much richness and information.

Of course, I also know how complex and polyvalent love is. I imagine that he sees me as a father and, because he’s nineteen and translates most emotions via his genitals, it is love. It’s not illegitimate love, but it’s _his_ love.

But I won’t be certain for some time and for the moment I have to check my worry with reason.  
  
\--a  cracking disapparition and I’m certain he’s been shot through with some clunky Soviet machine gun behind an anonymous sand dune.

Well, so much for reason.

\-----

The first letter comes precisely one month later by owl post.  
  
“Dear Remus,

Hello and hope you’re well. Were the daffodils out for St. David’s Day this year?  
  
I’m sorry that I left suddenly. I had thought about how I was going to tell you for weeks but quite honestly, I was certain that you would try to dissuade me. And maybe you would have succeeded. When I explain why, I hope that you understand.  
  
This war has swallowed up my whole life and I honestly don’t know who I am or why it’s happened. I looked at a photo of you and my Dad and Sirius and Peter and I realised that life for you had been so different. You didn’t have the recent memory of a war overshadowing your life and the threat of a new one always at the door. I don’t regret the life I’ve had. I’ve been lucky to do everything I could for the people I loved. But now I need to know life outside of war.

That’s why I’m going to Haiti. Wizards without Borders is using magic to reconstruct infrastructure for displaced people. I’m particularly attracted to Haiti because it’s one of the few places in the world where wizards live alongside muggles. Wizards aided the slave rebellion, and ever since they’ve stayed on as healers and civil engineers. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live somewhere and not feel like I’m hiding part of myself…You must know what that’s like.

I miss you, Remus. I miss talking to you, because you always seem to know when to just let me get my thoughts out, even if I'm just blagging on. And I miss being in the quiet with you, because with you it’s not uncomfortable. Does that make sense?  
  
I’ll write to you soon, I promise.  
  
Sincerely,  
Harry

p.s. Perhaps it’s a lost cause, but please don’t worry about me."

Once Remus had stilled the panicked images of international kidnapping gangs, indigenous voudoun wizards with a vendetta against white colonisers and even earthquake-ruptured buildings falling on Harry’s head, he thought it was perfectly natural. Harry has spent a long time destroying. Perhaps now he craves the slow and deliberate process of building something.

 ----- 

Now it’s two weeks later and the letter came by muggle post and he doubts Harry has suddenly developed a sense of dutifulness about keeping correspondence.  
  
“Dear Remus,  
  
I’m bisexual. I don’t even know that you’ll know what it means, but I have to say it.

I’ve only just learned the word.  My colleague from Canada said it the other day, after we’d quietly charged an electrical grid with a modified lumos charm. (Standard muggle energy sources are notoriously unstable here.) I asked him whether that’s someone who buys sex, because that’s at least one thing in the sexual world I’ve heard of. When he told me what it actually means, I knew immediately that it was me.

I’m telling you this because I think, even if wizards don’t have a word for it, that you will somehow understand. I’m also telling you this because I’m about to apparate to a city and do something bisexual. Probably go to a club where there are other bisexuals.  
  
Best Wishes,

Harry”

Bi-sexual. …Two or both, pertaining to sex? Someone who predominantly has two kinds of sex? Forward and backward? Slippery and slightly frictioney? In bed and on the roof?

I honestly didn’t know what he was talking about and because his letter was scant on details, I was left with the power of my intuitions. A now-twenty year old has made an important discovery about himself and is looking for like-minded people. This discovery has something to do with sex. Well, which of us wasn’t discovering something about our sexual selves at twenty?  
  
I hear the crack in the front garden, wondering how long it took for the letter to arrive and how much forward and backward debauchery he’d gotten up to since then.

Harry is dirty, redolent of the tropics, but tarted up in something ghastly and purple with too-long sleeves.  
  
“Did you read my letter?” he asks, without preliminaries.  
  
“How was the city?”  
  
“Not sure, really.”

I belatedly realise that there hadn’t actually been a stamp. Did he drop it in my post box himself? Suddenly I doubt that he’s made it to a city at all. Then what brings him here?  
  
“Hm, well come inside then. Tea?” I always need some caffeine before drawing out an analysis.  
  
“Please.”  
  
Harry drags a chair across the kitchen tiles to watch me work. I kindle the hob on the aga stove and set about the ritual of bags, milk, sugar, cups, saucer and chat, “You know, during the second world war, muggle supply lines gave equal priority to tea and ammunition. Because, well, if you lost your house during the blitz, then at least you could have a cup of tea.”  
  
He laughed unsteadily, “Very British. I suppose that’s what we all have in common.”

Once I set the kettle to boil, I revert to small talk until I've had an appropriate amount of caffeine.  
  
“You’ve come on a rare day in Wales. Sun and daffodils.”  
  
“They’re lovely. I saw the tulip stems as well.”  
  
“Yes, it’s going to be a vibrant summer. The trumpets on the daffies have a look of triumph about them, as if proclaiming something quite glorious to us mere mortals.” I notice the bitterness in my voice and can’t quite place it. Harry might not be the most articulate, but he grew up in an abusive household and has a well-attenuated ear for tone. How else could he sense an oncoming thrashing?

Harry pauses, looking over large and uncomfortable in the faux silk material of his shirt, but his eyes looking keen at me as if to say, _Notice, and spare me the embarrassment_.

Not so fast.

The copper kettle screeches on the stove and I say, mildly, “Now calm yourself.”Verbalising one’s relationship to objects, a habit of living on one’s own.  
  
Harry laughs, and I feel tension slip from my own shoulders. What am I holding there?—Oh, Remus, you daft old dear.  
  
I place the bags in the cups, delicately arranging the saucer of milk, sugar and silver spoons. Harry is practically vibrating with tension, but my nerves aren’t set unless everything is arranged on the tray just so.

As I reach for the kettle, Harry’s hand covers mine. I know what will happen, up until a tragic point of cross-purposes, but I selfishly can’t, or won’t stop myself--  
  
“Harry?—“ my tone is on the edge of admonishing and I can’t say why. One part of me wants gratification on my terms and another is uncoiling the inevitable moment where we finally see each other fully.  
  
“Remus.” he answers with such tempting clarity, belied by human dirt and an ill-fitting shirt and trousers that admittedly flatter his ass from this angle. Oh, how my mind goes of its own accord.  
  
I feel hot and panicked, like I’ve carelessly thrown my hand on a stovetop, but he squeezes gently with his square palm and short fingers. Solid, reassuring.  
  
“I can’t…” words contradicted by my body leaning forward imagining my encounter with that young nubile mouth.  
  
Our bodies meet and meld under rayon and an old wool cardigan as I wildly kiss his hair and forehead and scar. I want to know every seam and fissure on his skin.  
  
He opens his mouth wide and attacks me with a vulgar, hungry tongue. Dear God, my sex is so different.

  -----

I’m doubled over the kitchen table at an angle that tries my hamstrings as he licks and sucks my neck and shoulder like a vampire. His hands clasped over my wrists and that damn rayon shirt rubbing raw the nape of my neck.

But for once I’m grateful to not be so dear about avoiding pain. Bring on pain and the little aches and tragedies and disappointments clinging to the mad trolley of living.

 -----

On his back, he spreads forth a vulnerable engorged nub about the length of my thumb. I gently close it between my open mouth at if I were blowing warm air between cold-flushed fingertips. My hands want to press lower, to test for a fissure, for depth…but I respect the privacy of his body and just kiss as he tangles his fingers in my fringe and moans as if passing through revelation after revelation…

 -----  
  
“That was…” he says, heavy with an intelligently suppressed _I love you_ , _I want you. Forever. Forever_. As if time were a measure for this one moment’s intensity folded in its own failure and insecurity. He has grown, which fills me with a sense of promise and mourning. There is no youthful tonic for my own cynicism, but there is the promise that reality offers more than I feared.

 -----

“Can I get you something?” I say, after a languid doze in the privacy of our own bodies.  
  
“Chocolate,” he says, innocently, the off-white flat sheet pulled tight over his chest.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No, just taking the piss.”

I rise from the bed, unselfconscious in my old age, comfortable in the paunch and flat arse from sitting too often.

This is the moment that dressing gowns are for, when the breeze on one’s friction-weary bits can still be appreciated.

I return with the bitterly over-steeped tea neatly arranged on the tray.  
  
“So what is this I hear about bisexuality?” I ask, while he’s off-balance and the prepared speeches are well away from the table.  
  
He take a sip of the tepid tea and pulls a face. “This is really quite dreadful.”  
  
“Yes, it is.” I tip another heaped teaspoon of sugar into his cup, then my own. “I’ll make another pot. Then we can talk all night.”  
  
He pauses, looks out the window at the inevitable rain which has tilted the world on a forty-five degree axis as the sheets slant with the wind.

“Bisexual means that I’m a different person with everyone I love.”

 -----

I insist that Harry borrows a shirt, and thankfully one of Sirius’s is still lurking in the wardrobe. I slide aluminum stays in the collar and screw in two enameled cufflinks.

“They’ll rust in the humidity there.”  
  
“Basic grooming spells. A tarego can prevent moisture from penetrating your clothes.”  
  
This is why I teach, the moments when I realise that I know something of life.  
  
“I’ll forget.”  
  
I sigh comically, “Well, then I’ll wash up the rust.”

"A spell?"  
  
"Sodium bicarbonate."  
  
I shut the door to the wardrobe and adjust his collar where it’s riding up the back.  
  
“Are you going to a city to do bisexual things with bisexuals? I’d recommend Copenhagen.”  
  
“Why Copenhagen?”

“The cheese danishes are to die for.”  
  
He smiles and stands on tiptoe to kiss my forehead. It reminds me: Remus, you are not his teacher or his guardian and perhaps you could use some humbling. If humbling has such a knowing smile and deft hands, then yes, I can be taught.  
  
“No, it’s back to Haiti, I think. In a month I can do retrofitting that would take ten years with muggle technology.”  
  
I’m hurt only in an immediate sense. It’s more important for him to seize the world while the harvest is so full for him.  
  
He knits his brow in an expression beyond his age, and I remember that he is younger than me, but by no means young, really.  
  
“But I’ll be back for tea.” He squeezes my hand and gently kisses my bruised and bitten lips.

“Next month, then. Just in time for roses." I think that in Christian iconography, roses symbolise wounds and can't suppress the whole of the disappointment from my tone.

“I mean teatime tomorrow.  I think I like this bitter, over-brewed stuff.” He smiles wickedly, lets himself out into the garden and disapparates.

Outside the first gasp of spring has burst forth in her own rolling orgasm, the abundant, shivering green coating the tree branches. Soon the world will be so green it will blot out the sky, and we’ll all picnic in linen as the humid summer draws us out of our hardy British somnambulism. And perhaps this boy and I will smile in quiet intimacy on the village green with a bottle of Prosecco and neatly cut sandwiches, meeting in frivolous, unaccountable, passionate stillness.


End file.
